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Wednesday, June 10, 2015

The Ride is Over: Entourage the Movie Review

Being mildly interested in the show for a better part of the last decade, I've enjoyed my on and off relationship with the Entourage series. Chronicling the acting career of Vincent Chaseand his childhood friends: Eric "E" Murphy, Salvatore "Turtle" Asante, Johnny "Drama" Chase from New York, and their agent Ari Gold as they navigate the unfamiliar terrain of Los Angeles, California. The series, in fact, mimics Mark Wahlberg's experiences with his friends as an up and coming star in Hollywood in the late 90s.

While the show has always had it's charm, and as the movie full realizes, that charm is still there. The problem is that while the show attempted to hold your attention with a plot for an entire season (at one hour intervals) during its 8 season run on HBO, the movie doesn't have the same opportunity. Instead it tries to cram an entire season into a 104 minute movie. Or maybe it was attempting to have a grand series finale this way. It's hard to tell since the movie is utterly obsessed with cramming as many cameos as it can possibly can within the duration that it's allowed.

The film picks up shortly after the events of the series finale. Vincent Chase, who separated from his wife after nine days of marriage, wants to do something new in his career - which works out just fine since his old manager Ari Gold is now a studio head that promises his first film will be headlined by Vincent. They come to the agreement and budget with the condition that Vincent gets to direct the film, and Johnny Drama gets to have a small (albeit important) role. What follows is a series of stalling tactics as the film goes over budget and Ari has to ask more money from its Texas investors; the Father/Son creeper duo of Larsen and Travis McCredle (played without much interest by Billy Bob Thorton, and a very old and decrepit Haley Joel Osment). Larsen sends Travis to Hollywood, with Ari as his guide/babysitter, to view a private screening of the movie. Travis of course attempts to change the movie by removing Johnny Drama; and at one point insisting Vincent Chase himself be edited out of the film. Eventually everyone finds out this is all a jealous ploy by Travis since Vincent bedded a model, whom I refused to google the character's name because of how utterly unimportant the character actually is in the movie. She's eye candy for the sake of eye candy. Eventually the movie gets funded, comes out to the public and wins all sorts of awards (Johnny Drama wins a Golden Globe) and accolades, good guys win.

Bro: The Movie

To say the movie is abysmal in plot-line is a disservice to actual abysmalplot-lines. Maybe as a series finale, this movie could work, but as a stand alone film it just doesn't do anything for me. The characters, and Lord knows the actors try, are fairly one dimensional in this treatment and most of the jokes fall extremely flat. Most of the fun comes from seeing Turtle attempting to court Ronda Rousey during one of the subplots: there's a pregnancy subplot, Ari Gold and wife seeing therapy, and Johnny Drama sex video leak, and that's really about all there is to this movie. That being said, I could watch an entire hour of just Turtle getting destroyed in the Octagon by Rousey with the promise to "f*ck him" if he lasts more than 60 seconds.

Again, the laughs are too few and far between.When it works, it's great (Pharell, Wahlberg and Ronda Rousey), but the movie drags and it drags hard (pregnancy subplot, entire Travis plot). It's far too many misses and it just feels like this should've been saved for a HBO special event or been added to the series finale when it aired. Otherwise, it's a colossal waste of time, and a rental at best. Watch the trailer above and you've pretty much the time you need to spend in this box office bomb. Do yourself a favor and watch Mad Max, or Avengers, or even Jurassic World when that comes out, I'm sure it'll be money way better spent.

This is the whole movie. You're welcome.

SHR Rating:

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